Re: RSS Profile Character Data Advice

> Bill Kearney wrote:
> > If people want fancy formatting, get a web page.  These feeds are not
ones
> > you're looking for... (waves hand...)
>
> This has got nothing to do with fancy formatting. The issue we're trying
to
> resolve here is how to let people include ampersands and angle brackets in
> their titles.

I hear you, I'm just looking back on experience with how formatting creeps
into the mix and makes quite a mess.

> The reason for that suggestion was to ensure that our recommended encoding
> format would work in Bloglines. It actually relies on the *existence* of a
> bug in Bloglines rather than avoiding a bug. Since Bloglines is still one
of
> the most popular aggregators today, I believe it's important to tell
people
> how to get their feeds to work with it.

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T
Plain and simple.

Do not bend to deal with a bad tool.  Ask the bad tool be fixed.  You'd be
surprised how willing the toolmakers are to correct their errors when
someone actually works with them to understand and fix them.

> >> and simply tell
> >> publishers that other encodings are discouraged because they are
> >> unlikely to work properly in most aggregators.
> >
> > It would seem you're mixing terms here.  Plenty of character encodings
> > work
> > quite well for RSS, thank you.
>
> I guess that is a little confusing - "escaping" might be a better term to
> use. The HTML spec use the term "encode" for all sorts of things. I
believe
> the XML spec consistently uses the term "escape" when talking about entity
> reference conversions.

Yes, and note I talk of using glyphs, not letters or characters.  Some
languages and their encodings may end up using upwards of four values to
describe what gets shown on the screen as a single "character".
Technically something like an accented vowel can be noted two different (if
not more) ways.  As a single character if it's already in Unicode, or as the
'plain' character followed by the accenting character reference (not the
same thing as the plain accent character).

> > I'm not sure using a bad tool as a reference is a good idea.  God help
you
> > when the other limitations of a tool start being offered as excuses to
> > further bastardize a spec.  Just because the tools suck doesn't mean the
> > spec has to bend to tyranny.
>
> We're not writing a spec here. The reason for the profile (IMO) is to help
> people get their feeds to work with the popular RSS implementations that
> exist today. We aren't bending the spec to deal with sucky tools, but we
are
> telling people in what way those tools suck. That way they at least have
the
> knowledge to bend their feeds to work with those tools, if they so choose.

Rationalize it all you want, but you're still talking about warping the spec
to accomodate a bad tool.  Popular or not it deserves being fixed, if only
to prevent MORE bad tools following in it's footsteps (aka iTunes).

-Bill Kearney
Syndic8.com



 
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